MARIE NEY

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 106, 6 May 1936, Page 5

MARIE NEY

LEAD IN A THRILLER

MAKING WOMEN SCREAM

(By Ncllc M. Scanlan.)

LONDON; April 10.

When the history of-this. period' is written, one.fact will, emerge, and that is the passion for thrillers which has characterised the:. past few years. Literary pages of newspapers now have a special column for thrillers; though fiction, they are a special class of fiction. And in the libraries the demand for them is great, and growing. Highbrows and lowbrows read them. In some, it is merely a tale of. horror, and the characters count for little so long as the thrill is there. Others take their characterisation as ' seriously as their plot. But one thing is demanded of 'all—suspense and- creeps.

.The theatre, too, is having its spate of thrillers. And the more horrors the better. It is an odd' taste, this desire to pay good money to sit through a couple of hours of torment. Yet a good thriller is sure of a long run. It will attract when comedy, farce, and serious drama may wilt and die.

The latest actress to harrow us is Marie Ney, who is now appearing in "Love from a Stranger," a thriller by Frank Vosper, based on a story by Agatha Christie. At the performance I attended a woman beside me sprang up and screamed. No doubt she felt she had had her moneys -worth.

It is the story of two girls who share a flat and work in an office, winning £20,000 in a sweepstake. One of them, Marie Ney, who has been engaged for five years to a nice bronzed Britisher working in Egypt, decides that she wants three months' grace before marrying him, an opportunity to have a mild fling before settling down. The other is going. to travel, so they are letting the flat. Frank Vosper, a rough he-man with a slight American accent, comes to look at the flat just when Nigel from Egypt is clearing his luggage at Tilbury. " She breaks her engagement, and. promptly marries the stranger, who takes a remote cottage without telephone, where he plans to add her to the five other women h» has married for their money, murdered, and buried in the cellar, after getting control of their fortune. The horror gradually develops, the maniac peeps out, and the climax comes when she discovers his past, finds herself locked in the cottage with him,. and realises that he means to murder her that night. It is all very creepy, but

she outwits him in the end, and the

bronzed Nigel thumps on the locked door and comes in to rescue the hysterical, screaming girl as the final curtain falls. Marie Ney has a fine part. She is on the stage practically throughout the whole three acts, and in the last ten minutes she has a chance to show her emotional qualities. But she told me that some of her highbrow friends had protested at her appearing in a thriller. Such horrors do occur in life, if we can believe the newspapers, so it has some claim to realism, and the. character has scope for many fine shades of interpretation, the slow awakening* of that sense of terror, and the final artistry in outwitting the madman. For her playing of this part Marie Ney has had deservedly good notices from the critics, and if London retains its taste for thrillers during the summer it should have a. long run. '